


the two of us are just young gods

by Fahreechaa



Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: M/M, Pining, this is me projecting onto jian yi, title from a halsey song, wrote in one sitting bc i was feeling emotional and shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 06:45:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13161456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fahreechaa/pseuds/Fahreechaa
Summary: The sky stretched above them, millions of stars glittering above. They looked close enough for Yi to touch them if he wanted to. So he climbed down the slide and touched Xi’s cheek. The bright boy turned around to look at him, his mouth chewing slowly.“What?” Xi said.Yi closed his eyes and felt the heat of his skin through the touch. “Nothing,” he said.There was nothing that could describe this. There was too much that could describe this. They threatened to drown him, burn him, leave him an empty husk.





	the two of us are just young gods

**Author's Note:**

> And I've been sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool  
> For a while now, drowning my thoughts out with the sounds  
> But do you feel like a young god?  
> You know the two of us are just young gods  
> And we'll be flying through the streets with the people underneath  
> And they're running, running, running  
> -Halsey (Young Gods)
> 
> listen to the song while youre reading the fic it works well!!  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqYTSbI2Xe4

It was a cold night.

 

Most of them were cold nights, really.

 

Yi pulled the covers closer to himself in a futile attempt to drive off the cold. It was always there, creeping along his neck and his arms and suffocating him. 

 

The darkness held him down while the silence choked him slowly. It was a fight he lost every night, but he came back to life every morning.

 

Occasionally, a car’s horn blared outside, or a night bird hooted softly. Yi’s heart drummed steadily, drowning everything else into silence.

 

He checked his phone on the nightstand and its glow nearly blinded him. He squinted at the lockscreen and the time declared itself as 1:15 AM. 

 

Too early to get up. Yi turned over in his bed restlessly and listened to the deafening silence from the house, from his mother’s bedroom, the living room, the kitchen. It was wrapping his fingers around his throat and his eyes, like it always did. He couldn't breathe, but Yi had been drowning for a long time.

 

He was suddenly afraid. 

 

The claws dug deeper into flesh.

 

He whipped off his covers and sat up quickly. He stuck his feet into slippers and stumbled over to the bathroom. There, he opened the light and gazed at himself in the mirror. His skin was a shade of sickly green, and the bags underneath his eyes were made worse by the redness above them. His white knuckles quivered slightly as they clenched the sink counter.

 

He couldn't do it tonight. He couldn't stay still. 

 

Tonight was a losing battle.

 

He went back to his room and dug out a heavy tan coat and a long red scarf. He wrapped the scarf around his neck as he walked over to his white sneakers by the front door, waiting where he left them. His phone, he left on the nightstand. There was no one to call, and no one was going to call him.

 

He left the house soundlessly, exactly the way he entered it.

It was a glass house, and Yi was afraid of breaking it before his mother would come home from her trip.

 

The outside air was colder than the inside, and it nipped at his nose. He wrapped the scarf around his face and wished desperately that he had remembered to bring his gloves. He imagined them sitting inside his drawer and cursed his incompetence. He rubbed his hands together as he walked down the sidewalk.

 

Well. He wasn't sure that this stroll was a better idea then remaining in bed. It was much colder down here, and he was the only idiot walking around like he didn't have a place to go, a person to come home to. Cars zoomed by quickly to his side, occasionally blaring music. Dogs barked at him from behind fences.

 

It was a lot quieter outside.

 

He considered a destination.  There was always He Tian’s house, whose occupant also suffered from insomnia. No doubt he was pacing his large, empty flat, lit cigarette in his mouth barely holding him together.

 

He and He Tian were a lot alike, almost reflections of each other.

He didn't want to look in any more mirrors today, however.

 

Yi continued walking down the sidewalk, then turned and crossed the street when no cars were rushing by. On the other side, he contemplated going to the Redhead’s house, but he didn't know where he lived and he didn't know what he would see over there.

 

Sometimes loud things were scarier than quiet things.

 

He reached a small shop that was open twenty-four hours, and he walked inside and nodded at the cashier. He prodded and peered at things and left exactly three minutes later with a pack of gum and a small can of cat food for the mean old white cat who often prowled near where he lived. It wasn't a nice night for anyone, human or otherwise.

 

He stuck a stick of gum in his mouth and sat on the curb outside the store. His white shoes were getting dirtied by the water there. He numbly told himself to move them, but he didn't. He just popped his gum loudly. He wished that he could listen to music or something, right now. 

 

He got up again with the gum lost its flavor and spat it onto the curb. He resumed walking down the dimly lit sidewalk.

 

He knew where he was going.

 

Probably before he even went to bed that night.

 

He never had a choice. 

 

He walked faster.

 

He walked up the stairs to the door that he had knocked on hundreds of times before. Possibly his previous lives had knocked on here before. He lifted his knuckles and rapped them against the door, a familiar sound that finally lifted the silence.

The door swung open minutes later to reveal an angry boy with an angry red mouth. Yi found himself looking at that mouth.

 

“What do you want, Jian Yi?” the angry boy whispered, angrily. “It’s fucking almost two in the morning! You're lucky my parents are heavy sleepers!”

 

Yi’s mother didn't sleep. It was that, and her soft hair, that she passed onto her son.

 

Xi’s parents seem to have passed on their thick eyebrows and their tendency to be easily annoyed from idiots, especially those who came knocking in the early hours of the morning. He furrowed his thick eyebrows at Yi and his lips were pulled downwards. 

 

Suddenly Xi looked more tired than furious, and Yi knew he would let him in. But Yi didn't want to spend the night in any houses. He felt too big for any houses, too loud to contain himself.

 

He was a god tonight.

 

So he told the other boy, “Come with me.”

 

Xi’s expression became even more confused at that. “Go with you?  _ Where _ ?”

 

_ The store. The park. Around the whole fucking world _ . 

 

“The park,” Yi settled. 

 

Xi said nothing, and Yi could see his mind attempting to spin under the haze of sleep and tiredness. But Xi always allowed emotion to overcome reason, even on the best of days. Yi saw himself reflected in Xi’s eyes, bright and impossibly tall. He had won this battle.

 

“Let me get my coat,” he finally said, and he closed the door quietly. It seemed that only seconds had passed before he had returned, dressed in a poofy blue coat and black gloves. Time was acting strange tonight, faster somehow.

Another pair of black gloves was clutched in his hand.

 

“Here,” Xi said, holding them out. “Your fingers look ready to drop off, idiot.”

Yi took them and stuck his fingers inside carefully, then turned his hands around and stared down at them.

 

“C’mon, you weirdo,” Xi muttered, nudging him with his shoulder. “Before my parents wake up.”

 

They crept quietly down the stairs, something they were used to when they were trying to sneak away from Xi’s clingy little sister.

The two reached the bottom and began to walk down the familiar way to the neighborhood park, just a small thing with a slide and a swingset and the whole fucking galaxy above.

 

Yi noticed a small shop a few feet away proclaiming they were open with a bright neon sign. He ran right up to the window and pressed his cold face to it. Inside, packaged food filled the shelves. It seemed completely empty, save for the bored-looking girl at the cashier. 

He motioned for Xi to follow him, then opened the door with a loud jingle. Xi followed close behind, looking amused. 

 

Jian grabbed a basket and began to knock things into it, not even bothering to look at half the items that fell in. Cookies, sandwiches, candy, chips, and more towered high in his basket. Xi stood to the side nervously, frowning down at the basket.

 

“Jian-” he began.

Yi waved him off. “Get whatever you want, XiXi. The whole damn store.”

Xi fixed him with an annoyed glance. “It looks like you're already doing that.”

 

Yi shrugged, not caring. He examined a display of drinks, and swiped a few of those as well. Finally having his fill, he carried them over to the cashier, where she looked over his items with little interest.

 

“Thank you, have a good night,” she drawled. 

 

They left the store armed with at least five plastic bags. 

 

“Where should we go now?” he asked Xi.

“I thought we were going to the park,” Xi said.

“Later,” Yi answered. He was afraid that if he stayed in one place, he would explode. He was an overflowing sink tonight, a house on fire. “Let’s walk around.”

 

As they walked a little ahead, they found a shopping cart fallen on its side in a large parking lot. Yi threw a grin at his best friend then bounded ahead to pick it up again. It did not look as though it was lying there for very long, seeing as it was still mostly clean, a few leaves inside.

 

“Xi, put the bags in here,” Yi commanded.

He shrugged and moved to put them in. Yi waited until all the bags were safely inside before crouching down and picking the other boy up, lifting him clean off the floor.

 

_ “Jian Yi, what the fuck! _ ” Xi screeched. “Put me down!” 

 

Yi put him gently inside the cart, next to the bags. Xi stared at him, absolutely speechless, and probably regretting coming along with Yi’s whims tonight.

 

Yi gripped the handles of the cart firmly and began to run, picking up speed on the way. As Xi yelled fearfully and held on tightly to the sides of the cart, Yi laughed like a maniac, long and echoing. As the cart approached satisfactory speed, he let go of the handles and swung himself over the cart, right in Xi’s lap. The cart tumbled along until it fell onto its side with a deafening clang.

 

They fell out into the parking lot, the bags following close behind.

“Ow,” Xi winced. He poked carefully at one of the bags. “I think you broke one of the bottles.” He got up gingerly, brushing at his sides. 

 

Yi looked up at him, grinning. “Let’s do it again.”

Xi moved quickly, yanking the other right off the floor and shoving him into the cart. Yi fell back into it and cringed at the pain that suddenly seared through his head when it made contact with the metal.

 

Xi gripped the handles and smirked down at Yi, eyebrow raised. Yi looked back, caught by the bright blue of his eyes. He was drowning in it, but he never felt so alive.

 

Xi began to run down the parking lot, holding on tightly. He swung over the side and fell on top of Yi. This time, the cart continued on its course for a while. Yi looked up at the smooth curve of Xi’s neck, and wondered if he would notice if he licked it. Or bit it. 

 

The cart finally fell over, and the two boys tumbled out roughly, exposed faces covered in scrapes. They looked at each other, both panting and smirking, two boys messing around.

 

They heard a shout, and looked behind them to see a store employee marching towards them, no doubt alerted by the sound.

 

Yi quickly got up and picked up the bags. “C’mon, XiXi!” he said, grinning. Or maybe he was downright roaring with laughter. He couldn't tell anymore. 

 

Xi scooped up the remaining bags and the two bolted it the hell out of there.

 

They ran down the way to the small park that was about five minutes again. Yi spotted the slide first, and he ran even faster to reach it first. Xi slowed down to a light trot and carefully deposited the bags at the bottom of the slide. Yi clambered to the top of it.

 

“Throw me one of the bags, XiXi.”

Xi held a bag up.

 

Yi dug inside and took out a wrapped sandwich. He took a huge bite and was pleased to find it had a lot of cheese in it. Everything seemed to be going alright tonight, from the gloves to the fucking sandwich.

 

Xi sat down at the end of the slide and ripped open a pack of cookies.

 

The two ate in silence. There was no one else in the park, except for the occasional cat that prowled by, throwing them a sharp glance.

 

The sky stretched above them, millions of stars glittering above. They looked close enough for Yi to touch them if he wanted to. So he climbed down the slide and touched Xi’s cheek. The bright boy turned around to look at him, his mouth chewing slowly.

 

“What?” Xi said.

 

Yi closed his eyes and felt the heat of his skin through the touch. “Nothing,” he said. 

There was nothing that could describe this. There was too much that could describe this. They threatened to drown him, burn him, leave him an empty husk.

 

He removed his hand. 

 

Xi grabbed it back. 

 

“Let’s go sit on the grass,” he said.

 

Yi nodded. Or maybe he said  _ yes, yes, yes, id go to the moon and back for you, Zhan Zheng Xi _

 

The boys walked over to the grass, hands still connecting them. Xi flopped down on his back and Yi flopped on his ass. The two looked up at the night sky above them.

 

“Sure are bright tonight,” Xi muttered quietly.

_ Idiot _ , Yi thought.  _ Have you seen yourself? I'm about to go blind. _

 

His hand shook in Xi’s grasp, but the other boy merely tightened his hold, as though afraid of losing him.

 

_ Were gods afraid of things?  _

 

He looked at Xi,  eyes bright as they reflected the stars. He didn't look afraid of anything. He looked immovable.

 

_ What do I look like? _ Yi thought.

 

But he apparently he had said it out loud, because Xi turned to look at him curiously. 

 

“You have leaves in your hair,” Xi told him. “So, pretty stupid.”

 

He grinned. “Thanks. You have cookie crumbs on your coat.”

 

They sat in silence again, but they were boys who were usually silent.

 

“It's pretty late,” Xi finally said. “We should get back home. We have school in a few hours.”

 

Yi murmured in agreement, but he had never wanted to leave less. He leaned his head on the boy’s shoulder slowly, asking permission with his hesitation. Xi said nothing.

 

He closed his eyes, his nose inhaling the scent of Xi: mostly cheap cologne, sweat, and oddly, mint. 

Other men got drunk from alcohol. Yi got drunk off this smell. He felt his head beginning to become hazy.

 

In a while, Xi would return to him home, where his family slept. Yi would return to the glass silence.

 

If he kept his eyes closed, he could pretend they could stay here forever. People would make legends about them, the two gods who sat in the grass and looked at the sky and clasped sweaty hands and could move mountains and rip apart skies. 

_ Would the story have a happy ending?  _ Was Yi allowed to have it, even for a few moments, a heartbeat? 

 

He felt Xi rest his head on top of his own.

 

He felt infinite, for a moment, two, three.

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to a young god i once knew
> 
> thank you for reading!


End file.
